Electronic mail (“email”) is an electronic message, which a person may type at a computer system, such as a personal digital assistant (“PDA”) or conventional computer, and then transmit the email over a computer network to another person. For a user to type an email, the computer system includes an email client (“client”), which is an application used to read, write and send email. In simple terms, the client, such as in Lotus Notes®, Outlook®, Gmail®, Eudora®, or AOL®, is the user interface for an email system.
Typically, the email client includes a simple text editor, an address book, a filing cabinet and a communications module. The text editor allows the user to compose a text message for an email, and usually includes spell and grammar checking as well as formatting facilities. The text editor may also include the ability to append attachments to an email such as files, documents, executable programs, schematics, etc. The address book stores commonly used email addresses in a convenient format to reduce the chance of email address errors. The filing cabinet stores email messages, both sent and received, and usually includes a search function for easy retrieval of a desired email or email attachment. The communications module deals with transport to and from the email client over a computer network to a mail server, the application that receives an email from email clients and/or other mail servers.
As is commonplace, especially with today's intermingling of personal and professional lives, many people have more than one email account from which to send and receive emails, For instance, oftentimes, the same person has an email account through work, through an internet service provider, e.g., AOL® and Earthlink®, and through free web-based providers, e.g., Gmail® by Google® and Hotmail® by MSN®. Whether purposefully or accidentally, the same person will give out, say, a personal email address to a colleague and a work email address to a friend, and others will collect both personal and work emails for the same person through email forwards and the like; as a result, one can end up with multiple email addresses for the same person/contact and not even know it. Furthermore, when a person sends the same email to multiple email accounts belonging to the same person, or, a person receives through an email client receiving email from the same person's multiple email accounts, unnecessary bandwidth use and traffic may occur as described below. Accordingly, users of an email system may want to choose where these incoming emails are routed based on a variety of set parameters so that the incoming email is routed to where the intended recipient wishes to receive them or not.
A computer network, such as one belonging to a business organization, consists of a number of computer systems interconnected with links for transmission of data between the computer systems, which serve as conduits to send an email to a recipient. In addition to handling email traffic, with or without email attachments, it is noteworthy to point out that these computer systems also handle the everyday rigors of ah organization's use, including, for example, storing and retrieving documents, running multiple applications and operating systems, and so forth. The physical design of each link limits the bandwidth for the link. Bandwidth refers to the amount of data that can be transmitted in a fixed amount of time. The topology of the network, i.e., the organization, number, and interconnection between links of the network, can be designed to increase bandwidth between different points on the network by providing parallel links. Therefore, design of the bandwidth and topology for these networks must take into consideration all traffic, finding a balance between the costs involved with increasing bandwidths of links and the slowdowns when the bandwidths are less than the peak traffic requirements.
Compromising the network's capacity more so is the handling of email traffic when the emails include email attachments. Email attachments can cause the traffic bandwidth requirements to peak, slowing down the network for everyday operations, For example, a user may draft a text email, which is about 20 kilobytes, and transmit the email to ten people. As a result, the mail server introduces 200 kilobytes of data to the network when the mail server generates a copy of the email for each of the ten recipients. Even small networks are likely able to handle 200 kilobytes without any noticeable slowdowns. However, the user may decide to transmit a drawing, which may be somewhere between 2 megabytes and 20 megabytes, along with the text of the email to enhance the communication. Now, the mail server copies not only the email, but also the email attachment and introduces between 22 megabytes and 202 megabytes of data traffic at substantially the same time, peaking the load, at least in certain links, of even large networks. This makes the network run slower for other users. Possibly even more troublesome, however, is from the employer's perspective: multiple emails to the same person may decrease a worker's productivity because the same person is expending time reading the same email sent to another email account for the same person, and may require the employer to procure more storage hardware of services. Furthermore, a worker may be receiving emails at work that are better suited for routing to their personal email account and handled on their personal time, as opposed to company time so as to defray wasting company time and resources.
Some solutions attempt to alleviate email traffic congestion by “throwing more money at the problem.” That is, to solve the congestion problem by increasing the size of the network by: increasing the network's bandwidth. In order to display, store, and retrieve data, the network must have computer systems such as dedicated mail servers of sufficient size to accommodate the data traffic requirements. Therefore, increasing a network's bandwidth necessarily requires an organization to make greater expenditures or institute restrictions on use of the network's computer systems to keep pace with the increased demands.
Further, the purchase of additional hardware components necessarily increases the mail server administrator's involvement in handling the ever-increasing email traffic over an organization's network, resulting in greater administrative costs. These types of solutions, however, are piecemeal solutions that will forever require greater expenditures, or restrictions as an organization grows. In short, these solutions are not solutions; they are patches for network problems.
Some solutions attempt to put into place client-based auto-forward rules. For example, if a User realizes that a family member tends to send email to the user's corporate email account despite requests to the contrary, the user can establish a rule in their email client to forward emails from the family member to the user's personal email account. However, this approach does not work well in situations where the email included a distribution list, and so replies to all will then be sent to the corporate email account. Furthermore, this solution requires at least double the bandwidth requirements on the corporate email server, namely, once on the incoming email and again when forwarded outbound. Furthermore, this solution can result in untimely receipt by the user, such as if the family member sent important information during non-working hours when the user may have had their corporate email client closed.
A need, therefore, exists for devices, methods and media to attenuate the foregoing problems by email systems being able to route incoming emails based on set preferences, which, when detected arise in a condition that dictates where an incoming email is to be routed before the email reaches the email client of an email system.